gesso d'oro - jason beene

For my wife's BDay...

2011-11-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

Tea Party!

Puss in Boots

2011-10-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

I recently did another "look and find" style book for the release of Dreamworks' Puss in Boots. Here are some of the illustrations from that project.

The Wednesdays

2011-10-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some interior illustrations that I just completed for Random House. It was such a fun story...I had a great time with these.

Come Play with Us!

2010-12-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

I just wrapped up the "Making Play" class at RISD's illustration department and I have to say the students produced some amazing work! We focused on non digital games, but would never call these games "traditional"...the students tackled everything from whimsical games for younger audiences (Peter Pan, Cupcake Baking), to games centered around unique IP's like "Dante's Inferno", Pink Floyd's "The Wall", Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu", and "Hamlet". Some young designers even stretched the notion of gameplay to incorporate game mechanics that touch on such topics as Bipolar Disorder, and the spreading of Cholera. We had a blast and wanted to have the chance to share these unique gameplay experiences with folks outside of the classroom...
...so we invite you to join us for our gallery show where you can get your game on! "The Game Show" will open on Thursday Jan 6th and 6pm. You'll find us playing in RISD's illustration building on the canal in Providence...hope to see you there!
If you miss Thursday, the work will be up until the 16th.

Cover image for Sophie Simon Solves Them All written by Lisa Graff and published by FSG... due out in Sept 2010!

2010-06-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorite images from Sophie Simon....

2010-06-22T07:44:00.001-07:00

Some page layout sketches from the Sophie project...

2010-06-22T07:42:00.001-07:00

Here are some in-progress images from the Shrek 4 project...

2010-06-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some illustrations...

2010-06-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

from a look and find book I illustrated for the current Shrek 4 movie release...click to enlarge.

A couple of illustrations for Weekly Reader...

2010-06-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

Quick little illustration test I did for a publisher...

2010-06-22T06:16:00.000-07:00

Some more recent game concept work...

2009-05-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

I can't wait to work on this game more!

Some more game mockups...

2009-05-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

These are from an ongoing project that I am excited to be a part of at the lab.

Here's a peek at an environmental concept piece...

2009-04-28T08:28:00.001-07:00

for a game that I've been working on at MIT's GAMBIT Lab. Hope you enjoy.

Recent character concept piece

2009-04-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a contract character concept produced for a game development studio.

Fabiola Balesterri Beene!!!

2009-03-09T18:31:00.001-07:00

We welcomed Fabiola into our lives at 9:28 am on 3/6/09....she was a healthy 7lbs 14 oz and we just arrived home today! Everyone is doing wonderfully and we are feeling very blessed to have such wonderfully supportive friends and family that helped us along the way and shared in this joy with us.

Sculpture for my wife and daughter...

2009-02-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics of a sculpture I just gave to my wife and daughter to honor the coming of our new baby....they loved it!

Here is a Max model...

2008-12-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

that I've slowly been playing around with when I get free moments.

Stereoscopic for cross 3D viewing...

2008-12-01T07:12:00.001-08:00

So I was inspired to take the earlier concept a step further by trying to recreate a stereoscopic image which were popular items in the period I am representing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy

Try crossing your eyes until the 2 images converge and you should be able to experience the scene in perceived 3D.

A composition of the previously posted characters and props...

2008-12-01T07:10:00.000-08:00

Some character concepts from an ongoing project...

2008-11-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

Some prop concepts from an ongoing project...

2008-11-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

Old/quick tablet sketch of my daughter, Mirabelle...

2008-11-21T12:03:00.001-08:00

Now with more 80's Glam!

foolin around in Mudbox...

2008-11-21T11:57:00.001-08:00

an old low poly duck...

2008-11-21T11:55:00.000-08:00

You can see a bit of process here...

2008-11-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

Some more sketches of character I've been working on...

2008-11-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

De Blob on the DS...

2008-11-21T11:28:00.001-08:00

Here are some early concepts for a DS game that I worked on...

WALL_E DS cutscenes...

2008-11-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

Go check out the WALL-E DS game to see the rest!

WALL-E DS Cutscene Storyboards...

2008-11-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

Opening scene:

Another scene:

The cutscenes in the WALL-E DS game were a ton of work (done in-house by a tiny team under tight deadlines) but well worth it. The end result (after polished animation, clean art, great audio, and help from tech) turned out great, and was no small feat to be done in-engine on the DS. Some members of the team were initially skeptical of the idea to do them, and a test was needed. I wrote out a description of each (action by action) and storyboarded two of the sequences to show to the team. Joe Keller, with some technical support from programming, made the first in-game test to be sure we could pull it off on the DS. Joe's work was great and showed the promise of taking the big step to do all 12 or so scenes from scratch by our team. We showed the tests to the folks at Pixar and got the green light. Juan Diaz picked up the remaining story boards and did a great job. Marcos Borregales and Joe Keller did the initial scene set ups and modeling. John Beauchemin and Haissam Badawi (with Bill Ballard pitching in) made them come to life with amazingly polished animations. Mashi Hasu arranged the music and sound effects. I managed and gave general direction to the team as well as editing the cuts, dropping in all of the eye expressions, and cuing tread movements in xml. All and all the team pushed extremely hard to get them done and their talents make them shine...Thanks guys!

* Note that we had the limitation of no physical camera movements (among many other tight constraints), so we moved the entire 3d scene instead ;)

Some early concepts for WALL-E DS...

2008-11-21T10:06:00.001-08:00

WALL-E GBA was stopped before it ever started...

2008-11-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

but I managed to squeeze out this pixel test before it was cancelled ;)

Here are some screens from Food Frenzy...

2008-11-21T08:27:00.001-08:00

Some Ratatouille DS screens...

2008-11-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Here are some screens from Ratatouille GBA....

2008-11-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

Some early Ratatouille GBA art concepts...

2008-11-21T07:40:00.001-08:00

Some early Ratatouille 3D tests...

2008-11-21T07:25:00.001-08:00

Ratatouille Video Game Early Concepts

2008-11-21T06:39:00.001-08:00

John Beauchemin, a animator at Helixe, sketched the Remy I incorporated into this image. Thanks, John!

Again, John and I collaborated on this one...I with the initial layout, John again sketching the characters, and I finished up with a touch of color/lighting. Thanks, again!

CARS DS...here are some screen shots...

2008-11-21T06:30:00.001-08:00

More concepts for the CARS DS game...

2008-11-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

Mock-ups to finish

2008-11-20T13:37:00.001-08:00

Here is another game from concept to final screen...it's remarkable when you experience the finished game with physics, animations, effects, and audio! They really come to life!

How the fishing Mater game evolved...

2008-11-20T13:21:00.000-08:00

Here you can see some sketches/mock-ups that show how one of the games was refined over the development process. The last image shows a final screen shot.

CARS DS ...some mini-games that didn't make the cut!

2008-11-20T12:58:00.001-08:00

Here is a peak at some mini-game concepts that didn't make the final game...

use the stylus to apply bumper balm to chapped/rusty grills!

Change lanes avoiding opponents while driving the piston cup race BACKWARDS!

Use the DS stylus to trace out constellations in the night sky to win Sally's heart!
Use the stylus to help Fillmore fill barrels of his homebrew fuel before the psychedelic fumes make gameplay shakey, man! Easy to see why some of these concepts never made it! ;)

Rise of the Underminer: part 2

2008-11-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

Here are some images I made for the cutscenes as well as some of the DS screen shots.

The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer

2008-11-20T12:04:00.001-08:00

I have to give mention to Eric Orr for producing the initial concept of the skull-masked character included in the image above (2nd row, 1st column)...thanks, Eric!

We made 2 more Incredibles games after the movie released. The Rise of the Underminer titles were based off of the villian that appeared at the end of the film. These were fun projects, but stretched me way too thin as lead artist on both simultaneously. I ended up doing too much production work, without enough time for focusing the two teams' visual direction.

The Incredibles

2008-11-20T11:57:00.000-08:00

While I was working at Tak 2, another team was working away at The Incredibles for GBA. I only had a small role on that team, doing small pickup tasks like the above portraits for the ui. I still love the animations in this game!

Tak 2: the Staff of Dreams

2008-11-20T10:34:00.000-08:00

Tak 2 was a really fun project. I had a hand in the design of the game as well as heading up the art (environments, characters, etc) and doing a bit of animation. This game had a great personality and richness.

The Fairly Odd Parents: Breakin 'da Rules

2008-11-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

This game was a lot of fun...we had a lot of creative freedom on this one and we ran with it. We also did some really fun things with color cycling to bring the backgrounds to life. I worked as the lead artist primarily concentrating my time on the level art which you can see above.

Tak and the Power of Juju

2008-11-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

Here is some stuff from Tak and the Power of Juju. I was working primarily on a different project at the time but did some work for this game. I touched up most of the Tak animations, did in-game ui work, some environment sets, and character portraits.

Rocket Power: Beach Bandits

2008-11-20T08:01:00.000-08:00

My first game and I can't seem to scratch up too much art for it. More of a learning experience for me than anything else... small teams and we all wore many hats. I contributed heavily to game design, level design, level art, character art, some animation, cutscenes (story and art)...looking back, I'm not sure how we pulled it all off!

HELIXE!

2008-11-20T06:45:00.001-08:00

Before my current position at MIT, I spent roughly 7 years working at an internal THQ development studio called Helixe. THQ recently closed Helixe's doors, shutting down the studio and leaving behind many fantastically talented folks. In the 8 or so years that Helixe was in existence they impressively produced nearly 20 titles for Nintendo GBA and DS, and I was lucky enough to contribute to the art(often also design) of the majority of them. We worked with the likes of Nickelodeon, Lucas, PIXAR, Warner Bros, Disney and developed all family friendly games that combined sold millions of copies. So I thought I'd travel down memory lane and post some work and other materials from those days.

The logo above was designed by Mike Krentz . . . the guy is beyond talented!

A recent caricature of a co-worker...

2008-11-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

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Pinocchio studies...

2008-11-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

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A couple of illustrations from way back...

2008-11-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

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Random doodles

2008-11-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

Here are some random doodles I grabbed from my notebooks...

Glass!

2008-11-10T13:44:00.000-08:00

Glass blowing....addictive stuff. I was lucky enough to get into 2 glass blowing winter sessions back at RISD. Now at MIT, my good fortune continues, as I blow glass here on Monday nights... Have to run to the glass lab soon!

Books!

2008-11-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

While in Italy, I spent a fair amount of time studying Italian binding in Assisi. Here are some projects. When I returned to Providence, I was able to apply some of these skills at the Providence Athenaeum working in the rare books room and repairing some of the collection there.

and more...

2008-11-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

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more paintings....

2008-11-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

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Some various oil paintings...

2008-11-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

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I miss Rome...

2008-11-10T13:19:00.001-08:00

Here is a sampling of sketches I grabbed from some old sketchbooks. Back in the RISD days, I spent a year in Italy (European Honors Program)... man oh man....life changing times.

Some old figure drawings...

2008-11-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

Here is a sampling of some old figures. I would love to get involved in a local open draw....anybody know of any sessions in the Boston/Cambridge area??

Welcome!

2008-11-10T12:03:00.001-08:00

Alright, I've had an itch to start posting my work both new and old for all to see, so let's give this blog thing a shot. I'll try to go way back and post some past stuff and slowly make my way to current. I'll try not to hold back so I'm sure there will be a fair mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly, but, please forgive. Some will be entirely my work, other's may be collaborations, other's still may simply be work that I had contributed art direction to and think is worth a look. (I will try to be clear in crediting those involved...sorry if I miss somebody) Also, from time to time I'm sure I'll post some art that I had nothing to do with but is/or has been a source of inspiration! Comments and inquiries welcome! Enjoy!